The first knowledge and networking meeting of this year's RPO (Risk Platform Governments) was all about AI. Can municipalities apply it? Can it be done responsibly? "One thing is for sure, ignoring it is not possible," says speaker Kees van den Tempel.
Van den Tempel spent 25 years working for governments at the intersection of ICT and service delivery. He loves mathematics, programming and algorithms. Out of interest, he applied himself to artificial intelligence. After the steam engine, electricity, the internal combustion engine and the computer, artificial intelligence is the fifth industrial revolution, he says. Van den Tempel foresees that 40% of the work hours we do now will soon be done by AI.
He shows how easy it is to create a deepfake video with malicious content. Deceptively real it looks. 'The truth crisis is just around the corner,' responds Christiaan Ravensbergen, director of VNG Risk Management. But AI is also applicable for good purposes. Van den Tempel explains how the Drechtsteden social service converts information videos on social schemes into any language with AI. Another municipality uses AI to track down 'wondering addresses' in the fight against undermining. 'Of course, eventually a human being has to look at the results, which is what went wrong in the benefits affair,' says Van den Tempel. The rijksoverheid prohibits civil servants from working with free versions of Chat GTP, for example, but applying programs in which ethical conditions are safeguarded is allowed. Municipalities can make their own policy in this regard.
The steps for creating an AI application are:
A project design (consider privacy and ethics, people, budget)
Data collection (anonymize, pseudonymize)
Data editing (cleansing)
Training and testing a model
Production (registration, server capacity, monitoring, security, etc.)
Van den Tempel recommends setting up a multidisciplinary team. Agile working with short sprints works best. 'You have to try it out and start small, otherwise you won't know what you're talking about.' He then shows how easy it is to instruct an AI tool to create a model in Python programming language. Beautiful as well as disturbing; it appears to be a breeze to get a script created for malware. He also shows that Chat GTP arguably refuses to do this, but delivers another, less ethical program within a minute. Van den Tempel advises every municipality to start gaining experience with AI. 'Devise a use case, experiment and involve different domains. AI is not hype, ignoring it is not possible.'
Lecture Kees van den Tempel (pdf, 3.6 MB)(1)
Three times a year, the RPO holds a meeting for the professional community of group and business controllers, heads of finance and strategic advisors from primarily municipalities, and from water boards and provinces.
IBD publishes handbook on AI (2)
(1) https://vng.nl/sites/default/files/2024-01/lezing_ai_v69_rpo_vng.pdf
(2) https://www.informatiebeveiligingsdienst.nl/nieuws/ibd-publiceert-handreiking-ai/
